


just listen to your friends / trust that they're fair / look in their eyes

by ScreechTheMighty



Series: We Could Be Immortals [1]
Category: Apex Legends (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Timeline, Discussion of Hallucinations, Gen, Timeline Shenanigans, based on the animated short, no beta reader we die like men, pre-game, there is one f-word so baby readers beware, unreality, we have to make her real name a tag guys, wrote this instead of sleeping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 03:44:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20575919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScreechTheMighty/pseuds/ScreechTheMighty
Summary: just listen to your friends / they only care / and hope you're all rightWraith gets an unexpected visitor (AKA me tying my fanfiction timeline into more of the canon stuff, kinda).





	just listen to your friends / trust that they're fair / look in their eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Real talk, this was my third attempt at writing this idea.

Wraith tried to keep as many things from the doctors as possible.

The reason was, for the most part, that she didn’t trust them. She had no reason to; they were rarely honest with _her_, something she had worked out even without the voices insisting that the doctors couldn’t be trusted. But sometimes she kept things from them because she had no way to explain what was happening to her. The specters were at the top of that list—shadowy, helmeted beings that showed up in the night, watching her from a corner of her room, unspeaking. She probably should have been more afraid of them than she was. At the very least, adding visual hallucinations to her already persistent auditory ones probably wasn’t a good sign for her mental health. But she had never been afraid of them. There was something protective about them. They made her feel safe. She couldn’t say that about most things these days.

Besides, they weren’t real. They couldn’t do anything to her.

That was what she thought, at least.

It wasn’t uncommon for her to wake up in pain, her scars sparking and glowing, a scream tearing past her lips. Usually that sound brought doctors and guards with their needles and even more restraints than she was already kept in. That night, before she could even scream, a hand clamped down over her mouth.

“_Shhh…_” hissed a voice—one of _the_ voices. Of course her hallucination would sound like her other hallucinations. “I know it hurts, I know, but you have to be quiet.”

Wraith tried, but a sob still escaped her lips, muffled by the stranger’s hand. Her body trembled in pain. It would fade, she knew, but that didn’t make her feel any better in the moment.

“I know, I know.” The specter’s hand gently ran through what was left of Wraith’s hair. “It’s almost over. You’ll be okay.”

The specter wasn’t wrong; not long after, the pain began to fade. The skin-crawling feeling in her arms faded not long after. Her body still shook, but that always took the longest to stop.

No, that wasn’t true. The emotions took longest to fade. The lingering feeling of dread wouldn’t leave her for the rest of the night and she knew it.

“_Fuck_,” she muttered tearfully as the hand was removed from her mouth.

“You’re telling me.” The specter crouched next to the bed. “Thirsty?”

Wraith knew this wasn’t real, but she nodded in response anyway. She _was_ thirsty. The specter pulled a water bottle from her belt and carefully tipped some of the water into Wraith’s mouth. It was cool and refreshing…and _real_.

Wraith nearly choked on the water in her haste to shrink away. The specter stepped back. “Sorry…”

“You can’t be real.” The water was dribbling down her chin. It was real. She could see it soaking into the sheets. If the water was real, then the specter had to be real. Or was she even crazier than she thought? She’d never had touch hallucinations before, but maybe she was getting worse. “_How…?!_”

“It’s a long story. But…”

The specter reached up and opened her helmet.

The face Wraith saw there was her own.

“…let’s just say we find a creative way out of here,” said the specter wearing her face.

Wraith had two ways she could react to this. She could freak out, or accept that this was happening. And honestly, she was too tired to freak out more. Her outburst had been draining, and left her too weak to do anything but accept things. Or, at least, to _not_ start screaming.

“So…you’re me from the future?” Wraith asked.

“Not exactly. More like…a version of you that made different choices.” The specter approached and held out the bottle again questioningly. When Wraith nodded, she stepped forward to give Wraith some more. “Do you ever dream? The ones that seem _real,_ where you’re free or trying to get out?”

Wraith swallowed the water—still cool, still refreshing, still so seemingly real—and nodded. “Yeah. Sometimes.”

“That’s you seeing the rest of us. Sometimes at the same time, sometimes a bit in the future. That’s what happened to me, anyway. It’s not like that for all of us. I’ve met a few, and it was different for some of them. But you know something we all have in common?” She smiled. “We’re strong. And we can get out. I swear.”

Wraith laughed bitterly. “_How?_ They won’t let me see other people. Every time I say my medicine isn’t working, they just up my sedatives. How am I supposed to get out when I can barely stand?”

“Well, for starters…” The specter sat on the edge of Wraith’s bed. “…learn to listen. Those voices are us, and we’re trying to help you. I know, it’s a lot to take in, but I’m telling the truth. If you only trust your eyes, you’ll lose. The dreams will help, too. All of us who have them used them to get out. And hey…”

She squeezed Wraith’s shoulder. The touch was solid, real, and the most comforting thing Wraith could remember feeling in a long time.

“You’re not crazy. Okay? Remember that.”

And those were the most comforting words she’d heard in a long time. Even if they might have been coming from a hallucination.

“I really hope you’re right about that,” Wraith muttered. Her eyes closed, despite how shaky she still felt. “And that you’re real.”

The specter laughed quietly. “Sleep. Things will be better tomorrow.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t. But I think you can make things better now.”

Maybe.

Wraith slipped into sleep. The specter remained as she fell into unconsciousness. The next morning, when Wraith woke up, the specter was gone.

But, if she squinted, she thought she could still see damp spots on the floor and on her bed.

Listening to the voices seemed unspeakable. It went against every ounce of common sense she had. But maybe—just maybe—it couldn’t hurt to try. Her situation was already so messed up that she didn’t think it could _possibly _make things worse. But if it had the potential to make everything better?

Yeah. It could be worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on tumblr at screechthemighty for general screaming and respawncinematicuniverse if you want to see my content links for reals instead of trusting that they'll be in the search results (because they won't).


End file.
